Re: Any tips for shooting from a Cessna plane?

Re: Any tips for shooting from a Cessna plane?by Diego Barraza on Apr 3, 2012 at 3:43:18 pm

There seems to be some disagreement about shutter speed, Todd is saying low shutter speed i.e. 50th/sec and David from aerial academy is saying high shutter speed i.e. 1/1000Sec. Is there any consensus on the matter?

Just to clear on what I have available, I cannot change this, this is what I have been set up to use and I have to base my choices on this equipment:

Camera 7D Canon
Good range of lenses from 28mm to 200mm
Cessna 172 plane
Choices of camera mount. Fig rig, tripod or plain handheld (got a Stedycam Merlin, but is out of the question)

The shot: Sweeping shot, the plane comes from west to east following the coastline, Im on the left side of the plane and I am seeing big white cliffs and bits of coast (south coast of England), we go up above the cliff and start turning to the north, where there is a grassy plane on top of the cliff were a woman is walking in a circle. The plane circles above her anticlockwise.

My plan: Camera mounted on fig rig, rubber ball on my lap for support, Shoot with the small window open. Shoot with 70mm, 50th/sec shutter speed, at least 8f stop. Frame where I will not see any of the plane's rigging and move the camera as little as possible and let the plane do the camera movement.